Gustav approaches the Big Easy

There's a good chance that Hurricane Gustav will strike New Orleans, at least indirectly. This time, things are going to be a bit different than they were three years ago when Hurricane Katrina hit the city.

Police with bullhorns plan to go street to street with a tough message about getting out ahead of Hurricane Gustav: This time there will be no shelter of last resort. The doors to the Superdome will be locked. Those who stay will be on their own.

Authorities issued the warning Friday as new forecasts made it increasingly clear that New Orleans will get some kind of hit — direct or indirect — as early as Monday.

And those among New Orleans' 310,000 residents who ignore orders to leave accept "all responsibility for themselves and their loved ones," said the city's emergency preparedness director, Jerry Sneed.

I sense that MSNBC is emphasizing the "you're on your own" aspect for a reason but I'll let that slide for now. There is also an extensive plan to evacuate those who can't get out on their own. Hopefully things will go better than they did three years ago, and hopefully the levees will hold and the city won't flood. Still, when a hurricane hits a major city like New Orleans, there are usually at least a few casualties. My thoughts are with the people of the Gulf Coast and I hope things turn out as well as they can.

Whatever happens, however many are injured or die, whatever the property damage ends up being, one thing's for sure. George Bush will be blamed.

Freedom for me, but not for thee

We hear all the time from the outraged Left about how Bush and the Republicans are stifling dissent and squelching free speech, all the while proving that their allegations are factually false because they're still talking.

Well now freedom of speech really is under attack, but it's not a Republican that's threatening it:

You can expect hardball in a presidential campaign, especially one in a country as divided as ours seems to be. But the kind of hardballs being pitched is an indication of the people and policies that an incoming administration will be employing.

That is why it’s particularly troubling that the Obama campaign has filed a criminal complaint against the people behind an ad being run that links Obama to avowed terrorist William Ayers.

The link in the excerpt is to Ben Smith's Blog where he notes that it isn't just Republicans and conservatives who have come under attack. Obama's general counsel, Bob Bauer is an equal opportunity assaulter:

It's worth noting that this isn't the first time Bauer has called for criminal investigations and prosecutions into the donors to independent groups critical of Obama, including one supporting John Edwards and another supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton. His words did have the effect of scaring their donors and consultants, but haven't yet appeared to result in any prosecution.

Chilling, and a foreshadowing of what's to come under an Obama administration. Additional commentary can be found at The DC Examiner. Hat tip to Mike at Cold Fury for bringing this to my attention.

Democrats have long held themselves up as the champions of free speech and all the other rights and freedoms (with one exception, of course) enumerated in the Constitution or elsewhere. While many, if not most Democrats really do support these rights, that support isn't universal among the Left. I've brought up the Fairness Doctrine before and my fear that it will be revived even worse than before under an Obama administration. This just confirms that my fears are justified. John Hinderaker at Powerline is equally concerned:

Obama's suggestion that it is illegal for a 501(c)(4) entity to fund issue ads that are negative toward him appears ludicrous. Here's the real question, though: if Obama is elected President, will he appoint an Attorney General who will carry out politically-motivated prosecutions like the one he is now demanding? I suppose we can't know for sure, but why wouldn't he? If he demands criminal prosecution of free speech that opposes his political interests when he's a candidate, why wouldn't he order it as President?

Answer: No reason at all.

Funny money

I live in Snohomish County, Washington. One of the larger local fairs is happening now and somebody thought it would be funny to sell fake 3$ bills "depicting Barack Obama wearing Arab headgear and featuring a camel" at the booth for the Snohomish County Republican Party.

Naturally, Obama supporters are all up in arms about this despite, as noted in the article:

"I don't think it's funny," said [Snohomish County Republican chairwoman Geri] Modrell, who said she ordered the bills removed as soon as she learned about them. "They were offensive. The volunteers are being told very clearly they must not do these sorts of things."

Now I personally don't condone these fake bills either. It reflects poorly on the Republican party and distracts from the real issues that I have with Obama, namely that he's a full-blown socialist. Even so, the reaction of some people is overblown:

Susan Ronken, a volunteer at the nearby Democratic Party booth at the fair, also saw the bills, which were present at the booth for at least two days this week.

"It was an absolute hate crime," said Ronken, who lives in Stanwood.

Give me a break. Satire yes, slander at worst, but a hate crime? Yet another example of someone claiming victim status in order to obtain power over those she disagrees with and shut them up.

Something else that piqued my interest was this:

The bills offended some passers-by at the fair, including Ronnie Thibault, a Monroe woman who said Republicans at the booth threatened to call security on her after she complained.

"My first reaction was, 'Are you kidding me? Really?' " said Thibault. "Even if a person is a Muslim, so what, but he [Obama] is not."

Thibault, who describes herself as a "hard-core Democrat," said she would have been just as offended if the Democratic booth at the fair had sold offensive depictions of Republican John McCain, who is expected to be nominated as the GOP presidential candidate next week in St. Paul, Minn.

This is pure speculation on my part but I suspect she did more than just complain which is what prompted the people manning the booth to consider calling security. She is, in her own words, a "hard-core Democrat" which implies that she is, shall we say, passionate about her views and her opinions of those who oppose them. As far as her claim that she'd be equally offended by an offensive description of John McCain, well I'll go ahead and give her the benefit of the doubt on that one, though it wouldn't surprise me if she expressed her offense somewhat less vehemently.

Never let the facts get in the way

During the run-up to last Tuesday's primary election here in Washington State, I had been hearing radio ads paid for by the campaign of Christine Gregoire attacking her most likely opponent (since confirmed by the primary vote) Dino Rossi. As you might recall, Rossi initially won the gubernatorial election in 2004 but ultimately lost by a very, very slim margin after the Democrat Party paid for a manual recount that overturned the results of the machine recount.

One of the ads, as noted in this article at the Seattle Times, said that "Rossi voted to increase the state gas tax in 2003 and that he once supported the largest cut in transportation funding in state history." The article is referring to television ads but the radio ads I heard were basically the same content.

Of course, as I suspected and as the article confirms, "The ad accurately reports Rossi's votes, but omits important context surrounding the issues." Covering that context would entail excerpting a significant portion of the article so instead I'll just ask you to read it for yourself.

Interestingly, the radio ads were airing on the local conservative talk radio station. I guess if they want to pay the money, the station will take it, even though the ads will be mostly ignored by the station's listeners.

Because we're not a Communist Dictatorship, that's why!

In a speech yesterday, Barack Obama had this to say:

Everybody's watching what's going on in Beijing right now with the Olympics. Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly the superior to us now, which means if you are a corporation deciding where to do business you're starting to think, "Beijing looks like a pretty good option." Why aren't we doing the same thing?

Yeah, Beijing looks pretty good. But only from certain angles.

Hugh Hewitt in this bit at Townhall sums it up nicely:

I suppose so. Provided you don't mind de minimus pollution controls, employing people under Chinese labor conditions, and you don't mind construction standards in the countryside that allow the collapse of thousands of buildings including schools when the earthquake hits, killing tens of thousands.

Obama has said a lot of stupid things recently, but the idea that totalitarian eye-candy engineering proves Beijing is the better than America is near the top of the list.

To be honest, I'm amazed that world records are falling the way they are at the Olympics in swimming and track given the pollution in the air. The swimming venue is indoors so I'm assuming its air is filtered. But the track and field venue (the "Birds Nest") is open air. Still it wouldn't surprise me if they expended the effort to install air filtration systems that provide relatively clean air at the level of the field and lower seating, not to mention the power it takes to run them.

Who you hang with, disarmament, and free speech

Yet another reason to question Barack Obama's judgment when it comes to those he associates with:

As an “ordinary American,” I sincerely question whether Barack Obama has the judgment to be president. His lack of judgment in choosing Eric Holder as a top adviser on his campaign -- the man partly responsible for pardoning terrorists who proudly claimed responsibility for my father’s murder -- serves as primary evidence supporting that judgment.

Holder now leads Obama’s team selecting his running mate for vice president, perhaps Obama’s most important decision during the campaign. Mr. Holder, formerly the No. 2 official in former President Bill Clinton’s Justice Department, often is mentioned as a potential attorney general in an Obama administration. This is the same man who was a driving force behind President Clinton’s pardons of members of the notorious Puerto Rican terrorist group, the Armed Forces for National Liberation (FALN).

I've been saying, and even his supporters have agreed, that Obama desires the disarmament of the law-abiding American citizenry:

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg with this guy. During the 109th U.S. Congress, he voted against Senate bill 397, which outlawed frivolous lawsuits against gun companies. And while campaigning for the presidency in Pennsylvania earlier this year, he voiced his support for reinstating the assault weapons ban and spoke openly about his opposition to laws which allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns on or about their persons.

I always wondered what plans Clinton had for us if he could ever take away our guns, and now I wonder why Obama has been such a vocal critic of private gun ownership in the years leading up to his run for the presidency. What type of “change” does he have in store for the American people if he can succeed in disarming us?

But we the people are not the only ones he wants to disarm:

Obama wants to disarm America nationally by defunding the missile defense initiatives of which Ronald Reagan dreamed and which President George W. Bush has begun implementing. In a video message to his supporters in 2007, Obama promised that, if elected, he would not “weaponize space” and that he would cut investments in the “unproven” missile defense systems Bush already has in place (add to this his additional promises to “slow our development of future combat systems” and pursue a “world without nuclear weapons” by reducing our own supply first, of course -- it’s almost as if you can hear John Lennon asking us to “imagine there’s no heaven”).

Obama’s opposition to self-defense through missile defense equates to the disarmament of our allies around the globe (if there is no missile defense shield to deploy at home, there will be no shield to deploy abroad). This belief will not be lost on former Soviet satellites, which can see what Russia has done to Georgia in the past weeks and ascertain the kind of “change” Obama has in mind for them if he succeeds in denying them their best means of self-defense.

Regarding his desire to eliminate on a practical level the Second Amendment, it has been remarked in response that what's really more important is freedom of speech and that we no longer need the Second to uphold the First in the information age. But don't harbor any illusions that free speech is going to be any more sacred should Democrats control both the executive and legislative branches.

Enter, once again, the Fairness Doctrine. Should Obama be elected, I fully expect the Democrat-controlled Congress to work as hard as it can to put legislation reinstating this odious practice on his desk. And he will most certainly sign it, with a flourish.

It will be enforced against conservative talk radio, essentially destroying the medium. It will be enforced against conservative websites, newspapers, and television network (note the singular). Should it be enforced against liberal radio networks (i.e. NPR), websites (i.e. Daily Kos), newspapers (i.e. the New York Times), and television networks (i.e. all but Fox News), the enforcement will be token in nature with the requirements to fulfill their "obligations" being so easy to meet they are essentially meaningless.

Expect to see the definition of "hate speech" expanded exponentially. Expect to see the word "tolerance" redefined to match what we now call "acceptance" or even "endorsement." Expect to see the nonexistent "right" not to be offended enshrined in regulation.

Don't think it can happen here? Think again. It's already happening in Europe and Canada. We even have Supreme Court Justices who think that European law should inform the decisions of that highest court. If you think it can never happen here, you are a fool. I'd like to think it's unlikely. But I won't make the mistake of believing it to be impossible.